You’ve Got Cheder in the Morning!!!

Fri 7th March, 2014

This is the worst thing that a child wants to hear…. no kid likes to go to school on Sunday (unless it’s my niece – the clever clogs). My son used to go to Alyth Belsize and he used to say: “I go to school Monday to Friday, you make me go to Shul on Saturday, when’s my day off???”

He has a point …

For years, they’ve been trying to make Cheder more exciting with that light green Lamdeni book, one of those green siddurs and a tuck shop. But getting my son to go to Cheder was hard work – the kid missed most weeks! He was happy to fake an illness but later that day he’d be playing video games and playing football in the garden.

Eventually, we were running out of excuses! “Nope can’t say it was a stomach bug, he had that last month … I think we’ll go with virus this week, at least that leaves more to the imagination…”

And he never did his Hebrew reading homework (also known as ‘doing your cheder’). The parents would get this little blue diary and have to sign which day your child had done their Hebrew reading. So basically, you’d get your son to read the night before Cheder and then just sign that he read 4 days that week. You just hope that the Cheder staff room isn’t loaded with forensic scientists checking signatures.

Cheder wasn’t fun for my husband either who had to stand like a lemon once a year doing Shul security. Nothing like an overweight schmuck with zero fighting experience looking after a synagogue in the pouring rain. But how do you explain turning up for security when your son hasn’t even bothered to turn up for Cheder that day??? OY VEY!!!

Has Cheder done its Cheder?

With new Jewish schools popping up like Yavneh, JPS and JCoss – the spiel around the synagogue is that Cheder will be no more. This will obviously delight my son (even though he’s in his 20’s) – but has Cheder done its day?

What about Robin’s Nest?

At The Jewish Mother Corporation (basically me in my kitchen) we’re always looking around for new and exciting things to share. According to my cousin in Australia, every young Jewish Mother in Australia is watching Robin’s Nest.

Robin’s Nest is like a kid’s TV channel with Jewish songs, stories and puppet shows. However, all the episodes are online and kids can watch on computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones! (It just costs around £2-3 per episode and cheaper if you buy in bulk).

Run by Robin Aron who is a Jewish Mother from Israel and America but now based in Melbourne, Australia, she composes Jewish songs and using different props, she creates a show based on Jewish themes and there’s one for every festival.

So it’s like a TV Channel especially for small Jewish kids and some of the songs are very catchy, you can see why it’s caught on in Australia. Robin’s Nest certainly brings Cheder to the 21st Century.

Robin has very kindly offered a free episode competition to a lucky Jewish Mother follower who likes her Facebook page! She will be in touch with the winner next week so CLICK HERE to like her Facebook page!

Our Cheder is called Orot and we have about 200 + children coming every week. They all appear to enjoy it and we have a tuck shop at break time. Quite a few of the older children stay for our amazing youth club. I help at these classes and both children and parents seem to be very happy.

My older sister used to get me out of bed early sun morning and make me go and hide with her either in the house or down
The street so she wouldn’t have to go Cheder as she hated it – we had a Jewish father but a non Jewish mother – we have laughed about it since . And yes dad did give up on her – funny though as I wish he’d sent me